Hesher [DVD]

This is one of those rare indi type films that is hard to categorise, except in being able to say it is ruddy excellent. It is about a young boy T.J. (Devin Brochu), who has lost his mother in a fatal car crash His father Paul (Rain Wilson of `Super' fame) is wallowing in prescription drug dependency as a way to by pass the grief. They are living with his Grandma and life is slowly unravelling.

After T.J. smashes a window of a house where Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is crashing, their paths become entwined. Hesher follows him in the best stalker style and decides he will just move in. The first thing he does is strip off and do his laundry followed by making an illegal cable hook up so they can get more TV channels - especially of the more adult variety.

T.J. is dealing with ghosts and bullies in equal measure and that leads to a chance meeting with supermarket cashier Nicole (Natalie Portman). T.J. bonds with her but Hesher is never too far away. He has an unhealthy like for profanity, porn, Metallica and arson; an ideal house guest you might say. Therfore not the sort of friend a young boy should really be associated with. What happens though is that the more mayhem he creates the more he breaks the catharsis of grief that is holding every body back.

This film does not stick to any convention, it is totally unpredictable and that is the essence of Hesher himself. There are no real pretty actors everything is seemingly low rent but with real people and it is so refreshing for that. Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to take on challenging roles and make interesting and well crafted cinema and is one of those actors who can be relied upon to make viewing, anything he is in, worthwhile. That said every single performance is to the high end of excellent especially Devin Brochu as T.J.

Directed and co - written by Spencer Susser in his debut for a major picture, who has struck cinematic gold for this off the wall, funny, rude, moving and brilliant film. It has not had a very wide distribution so I am hoping that it will do well in the DVD sales as we need more of this type of film and not less. I thoroughly enjoyed this film and would recommend to anyone who like the more `odd ball' film, for mainstream film addicts this may not be your thing, but I would urge to give it a go- moving funny and excellent.

Originally, my sole interest for watching this movie was that Joseph Gordon-Levitt starred in it. And once again, his performance was spectacular. And so was the rest of the cast in a story of a dangerously, aggressively chaotic metal-head squatter moving in on a grieving family, uprooting the lives of all and making them deal with their lot.

An instant entry in to my personal favourites list.

An excellent boy film, film about a boy at the sorrow and sad age of twelve or something, when the boy is confronted with real life, that is to say mourning and a boy that age does not know how to deal with mourning. Death maybe, but mourning no. Death is simple. It comes and it is finished. You stay behind and the real thing is starting: mourning.

Imagine an accident and you lose a parent and the car. You can mourn the parent or you can just accept the death of that parent and mourn the car. Mourning is a form of love that attaches you to an object or a person that no longer lives or exists. So mourning for a child of twelve is dramatic because he does not see beyond the present and because mourning is for him eternal.

He can get attached to a stranger who is going to create havoc around him, that's Hesher, or to a nice young woman who is going to become the substitute of the dead mother, and all the time he is going to be attached to the car in which the mother died, him in the back and his father at the wheel. He does not know what he is doing of course, but he has become a fetishist of the car. And that is sad.

And one day another dramatic event will happen and that will bring the crazy friend around and that will bring the world upside down and that will bring the world back onto its feet because it was standing its feet in the air before. And mourning will be finished and closure will be reached and life can start existing again, but unluckily the friend who created that havoc will have disappeared though he will present you with the cadaver of the car on your doorstep.

And you can keep that cadaver for ever and ever in your front garden or your back yard, next to your swimming pool if you have one or behind your cherry tree if there is one in your back garden.

That's why this film is interesting because it tells you how a boy of 12 years of age or so will find closure for the dramatic event that has sent his mind right upside down under his knees and next to his soles. There is a tremendous empathy in the anger it expresses, I don't mean tell, just your empathy of anger you get out of the story, if you have ever experienced such a loss at such an early age. If you haven't you will never ever be able to really get any event to closure because it will always be foreclosed before it happens, since foreclosure is always before the term of some said period of time.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU